La Pelona as Birdwoman [excerpt]

Tonight
I dared to crawl
beneath the sheets
to be nailed down
around me,
waiting for my lover, she
who enters
without knocking, she
who will unstitch
my every seam
along my thigh,
my side, my armpit.
She who carves
a heart out of the heart
and drops it
down her throat.
Sweet surrender this
slow death in sleep
as I dream
the love-making
is autopsy. How else
will I be hers
completely? Be her
treasure box I said:
a trove of pearls
and stones, the ding
of coins cascading
through her fingers.
The bird over her shoulder
not a parrot, but an owl
to be my mirror
when I close my eyes
and shape a moon-white
bowl out of my face
where she can wash
the hooks of her caress.

Rigoberto González was born in Bakersfield, California, on July 18, 1970, but lived in Michoacán, Mexico, until the age of ten. The son of migrant farm workers, González traveled between the United States and Mexico for much of his childhood. He earned a degree in Humanities and Social Sciences Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of California, Riverside, and an MFA from Arizona State University in Tempe.